Antimissile Politics

PRESSING DEFENSE needs, including but not limited to developing an antimissile shield, combine to drive up projected spending on the military. Political tempers are going up, too.

In the case of the ABM, congressional Republicans are pushing for an early vote on legislation to require a crash development program.

Some GOP figures see President Clinton as playing politics with the issue by proposing work on a program while talking to Russia about remaining a party to an old treaty that currently restricts the U.S. from building a missile shield.

GOP leaders want the ABM proposal, along with a 4.8 percent military pay raise, to be priority items of business now that Congress is back in session for the first time since Mr. Clinton's impeachment trial.

Mr. Clinton does appear bent on preempting Republicans on the antimissile scheme. The White House is threatening a veto - even though the president earmarked $6.6 billion for a missile defense program in his new defense budget.

The White House claims the measure before Congress would interfere with talks just under way in Moscow on modifying the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. But it appears to us that Mr. Clinton might be motivated to help Vice President Gore's expected bid for president in 2000 by trying to short-circuit the ABM proposal as a campaign issue.

ABM construction would take several years

The Clinton administration approach would be to earmark money for an ABM shield, but delay a presidential decision on actually building one until June 2000. GOP-backed legislation before Congress would eliminate the presidential decision and simply make a planned deployment official American policy.

Experts say it would take three or four years to build an ABM system, anyway, so the White House tactic only delays a go-ahead until the middle of a presidential campaign year.

ABM defense proposals before the House and Senate differ only slightly.

The House bill would state "that it is the policy of the United States to deploy a national missile defense." The Senate version would have a phrase declaring that an ABM system should be deployed "as soon as is technologically possible."

Mr. Clinton's critics make the persuasive argument, in our view. If the consensus is that America faces a real and growing danger of being attacked by missiles, then work on an ABM defense should be launched forthwith. The costs of building such a system will be enormous. The risks of not being defended would be even more enormous.